Why neither cigarettes nor smoking will ever kill you (in Korean) – On animacy and agency effects and other peculiarities of the Korean voice and diathesis system

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The Korean studies section at Stockholm University cordially invites you to a guest lecture by Stefan Knoob, University of Duisburg-Essen.

Though English is on the most extreme end of the spectrum, most European languages allow the appearance of causes in the subject slot of active constructions: STORMS can destroy, BALLS can break class, CIGARETTES can kill, NOISE can startle, FACTS can astonish. In many other languages, however, this is not possible and instead non-active constructions must be used (glass can get broken BY BALLS, people can die BECAUSE OF CIGARETTES).

Korean not only belongs to this type of language but shows further differentiation depending on degree of causation. The talk outlines some of these phenomena as well as other peculiarities of the Korean voice system of interest to both learners or prac-titioners as well as interested linguists.